Saturday 17 June 2017

Tigers Transfer Talk: Will Jakupovic and Robertson join Maguire in leaving Hull City?


Your weekly round-up of the players jumping off the good ship Hull City at an alarming rate! And the one or two its vaguely suggested  might arrive.



Sunday 11th June

According to The Sun, Michael Dawson is a target for Burnley. The apparent cheap release clauses in the contracts of our players following relegation are attracting interest after Curtis Davies went to Derby County for just £500k.

Along similar lines, Tom Huddlestone, who is said to have a release clause of £2m, was linked with Watford today but I can’t find any source for this rumour. It was either in a printed version of one of the Sundays or came from a crap “news” site and was given credence by appearing in the gossip columns on more reputable sites.

Monday 12th June

City’s prize youngster, 18-year-old Josh Tymon, is almost certainly leaving this summer having rejected a professional contract with The Tigers despite Ehab Allam’s brilliant efforts to keep him. The Sentinel say Stoke City are preparing a contract offer while ESPN claim Liverpool, Watford and Aston Villa are also interested. Josh should be worth £10m+ in the current market with add-ons or sell-on clauses. City will be lucky to get a fifth of that at tribunal.

The Sun suggest Burnley's Scott Arfield is being chased by West Brom, Hull and Fulham. Arfield is a wide midfielder who joined Burnley on a free from Huddersfield in 2013 and has been an important player in their two recent promotions to the Premier League and in establishing themselves in the top flight. The rag claims the fee would be £2.5m for the Canadian international who is a former Scotland U21 cap.

HITC – who are my least favourite news source, worse than Clubcall! – link Rangers’ Josh Windass with a move to City. It’s not a story that needs much putting together. It was reported last week that Josh will be allowed to leave Ibrox. City are an obvious match given his father’s standing in the City and current employment. I have asked Dean Windass for a comment on this one. He wouldn’t say anything. That’s unusual!

Tuesday 13th June

Sky Sports reported today that City have “received bids”for Harry Maguire and Andy Robertson. That wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. We know both are going and the last thing we’d want is for them to go later in the transfer window when the job of replacing them (and the other half a squad we’ve lost) would become increasingly difficult.

The Sun say the bid for Maguire is from Leicester City and is around £17m. While this number varies in other stories, almost every outlet suggest this bid is genuine. The Mirror claim Burnley are back in for Robertson having failed to get him in January.

Radio Humberside tweeted that City are set to lose yet another player with young defender Harvey Rodgers preferring a move to Fleetwood over signing a new contract.

New Hull City manager Leonid Slutsky is a friend of Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich speculation linking City with Chelsea loanees will be rife over the coming weeks. In the first genuine link, Evening Standard say Tomas Kalas is a loan target for City and Fulham. This story was confirmed by the Hull Daily Mail who spoke to the player’s agent. Czech international Kalas has had five loan spells away from Chelsea since they paid over £5m for him as a 17-year-old in 2010. He was at Fulham for the last campaign having been promoted with Middlesbrough the season prior.

In a far less believable story Tribal Football claim Arsenal want to buy 21-year-old Russian international Aleksandr Golovin from CSKA Moscow and loan him to City. Arsenal have been linked with the player for a while but a loan back to CSKA is far more likely than to The Tigers.

Thursday 15th June

Harry Maguire’s move to Leicester was officially announced today. The fee is officially undisclosed but is generally considered to be worth £16-17m eventually. How much of that is before add-ons depends on who you believe but is somewhere between £12-15m. Sheffield United will receive around £1.4m due to a sell-on clause in the deal that brought Harry to Hull.

The Maguire fee shows the current strength of the transfer market. He only has a year left on his contract and in the past that risk of losing him for nothing would have lead to a token price. However the competition for his signature, huge TV money burning a hole in pockets and the requirement for immediate success has strengthened the position of the seller.

Ex-boss Marco Silva isn’t just being linked with current City players. The Mirror say he wants to be re-united with last season’s loan signing Lazar Markovic from Liverpool while Clubcall (Yes, I know) claim a bid for another of our former loanees Omar Elabdellaoui has failed as the Norwegian right-back wants to stay at Olympiakos.

Friday 16th June

As promised the previous evening, we woke to an exclusive story from Radio Humberside that Goalie Eldin Jakupovic is close to a £2m move to Leicester City. The club took the highly unusual step of denying any bid has been received in a statement on the website. However, the BBC still ran the story on their site and claim discussions have taken place and Leicester are definitely interested.


Harvey Rodgers officially joined Fleetwood Town on a free transfer bagging a three-year deal. The 20-year-old centre half from Selby has been in the City youth ranks for almost a decade and impressed during a loan spell at Accrington last season. Losing him is a very careless act but not a surprising one from a club that shows no aptitude for protecting its assets at the moment. This isn’t a mistake on the level of Josh Tymon but is like the releasing of another North Yorkshire lad, Rory Watson, last season. Both are players who will go on to have very good careers. That would hopefully be with City but if not – they’d sell for a good amount of money.

I’ve already mentioned how useless I think HITC are and they run two stories on Friday that hopefully prove it. The first links City, along with QPR and Ipswich, with a move for Matty Fryatt. The striker has just been released by Nottingham Forest having not played for two years. He was an absolute hero at City and one of my favourite strikers to have worn black and amber but represents a massive risk.

The other HITC story suggests Southampton want our England U18 goalkeeper Will Mannion. While Will is well under contract and would command a fee, I can’t comprehend losing another of the brilliant young lads I watch so proudly whenever possible in the U23s.

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